Plea deal for former Duke University official who allegedly molested son on internet

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Frank Lombard, the man accused of molesting his son and offering him for sex over the internet, has reached a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Lombard’s attorney’s have filed the papers and a formal plea hearing is scheduled for Dec. 17, when the details of the plea deal will be announced.

With his plea, Lombard acknowledges he forced a minor to "engage in sexually explicit conduct ... for the purpose of transmitting a live visual depiction of such conduct."

Ben Friedman, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office told reporters that Lombard can expect a sentence of about 15 years in a federal prison. He has been held in the District of Columbia jail since last summer.

In June 2009, FBI agents along with Durham police officers arrested the former associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy Frank M. Lombard, 42, of 24 Indigo Creek Trail in Durham. Lombard was accused of inviting another man to travel to North Carolina in order to molest his adopted 5-year-old son. The other man, turned out to be a police officer posing as an online predator.

The internet sting targeting child molesters was conducted by the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, along with the FBI.

Allegedly, on at least three occasions Lombard could be seen via webcam performing oral sex and other sex acts on his adopted son. Apparently, Lombard had allowed other individuals to molest the child as well.

Lombard is accused of telling the D.C. Metropolitan police detective, that he had performed several sex acts on the 5-year-old and told the detective that he could have his way with the child if he flew to the Raleigh/Durham area. Lombard even provided the detective with a recommendation for hotel accommodations.

In 2007, an unknown internet user filed a complaint against Lombard for similar activities. In a sworn affidavit, that user claimed Lombard said he "was into incest" and had adopted two black children.

The disturbing chat transcripts have been released which showed Lombard being asked how he has access to the little boy, to which Lombard simply replies: "Adopted." He went on to describe the adoption process as "not so hard ... especially for a black boy."

Lombard also told the investigator that molesting the child was "easier when he was too young to know what was happening and when he couldn't talk ...He had a little too much Benadryl. Was knocked out."

Lombard is homosexual and lived with his boyfriend and their two adopted sons. Immediately following his arrest, both children were taken into the custody of the North Carolina Department of Social Services.

Lombard who has a master's degree in social work, was employed by Duke as a health-disparities researcher, studying HIV/AIDS in the rural South. He was fired after his arrest.

Interestingly enough, during his ten year career at Duke, Lombard often talked about the exploitation of poor blacks, while he was himself exploiting a black child for his own perverse sexual gratification.

This incredibly heinous crime continues to be conspicuously absent from mainstream press coverage.

 

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